History of Chinese Medieval Poetry: A Display of Four Hundred Years of National Spirit

Author: Wang Zhongling
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-08-01
Features: This historical work on the history of scholarship for the first time combines aesthetics and literature, achieving a comprehensive innovation in research and writing methods. The innovative principles include: the study of history is the creation of theory, holism, establishing a scientific logical structure, and grasping the progress of literary history from the construction of national culture—psychological dynamics. Therefore, as mentioned in the book's "Epilogue," it is a work that "emphasizes grasping the successive logical progression of each stage of the poetic history from the development of national thinking, the evolution of social trends, changes in aesthetic tastes, and the construction of aesthetic psychology, in order to showcase our nation's four-century spiritual history and focus on the elucidation of art philosophy." The book is divided into two volumes: The upper volume consists of five parts, which elaborate on the literary movements of this period from a high-level perspective: the evolution of aesthetic tastes from "beauty" to "elegance"; the replacement of the of the Han people by the of, giving rise to the aesthetic principle of "summarizing much in little"; the realization of the "true beauty" concept, forming three characteristics of medieval literature; and the tendency of literary development toward a new aesthetic ideal: "hidden elegance." The lower volume comprises seven parts, detailing the development of poetic history from the Wei to the Sui dynasties, and exploring the three logical elements inherent in some secondary categories, as well as the expansion and progression of the three sets of contradictions they constitute, which serve as the deep logical thread throughout the entire process. On one hand, the book connects and integrates the development of national thinking, social and cultural progress, and changes in literature itself through the mediation of the construction of aesthetic psychology. On the other hand, it links the highly abstract elements of logical factors with the concrete realities of poets and their works through specific historical processes. The author summarizes the literary development of the Wei, Western Jin, Eastern Jin, Southern Dynasties, Northern Dynasties to the Sui periods in four processes: the rise and fall of literary refinement and metaphysical discourse, the popularization of simplicity, and the integration of the northern and southern schools. All poets discussed in the medieval period are comprehensively categorized into these four processes, each with a specific position. As a result, the entire book forms a highly rigorous and cohesive whole, completely transforming the fragmented, isolated, and lack of logical coherence in previous research methods. It avoids both impoverished historical determinism and blind randomness.